When the gods created our world they set up a cycle designed to sustain it forever. This Great Cycle was comprised of three realms, each working with the others in perfect harmony. These realms are known as Dream, Spirit and Life.
But wait just a tic. When you look at the circle of eight there are four Realms. So why isn’t Void included in the cycle?
The Void is a formless expanse of nothingness, much like a blank canvass. It was used by the Elder gods to create anything their imagination could come up with. For millennia they did exactly that, creating worlds and then knocking them over like so many child’s blocks when they tired of them.
One enterprising god conceived of the idea of a self-perpetuating system within the void. To create it he needed the help of all the other gods, and spent long years entreating them to lend their aid.
When then finally agreed construction began on the Great Cycle. Reevanthara, the great smith, sectioned off a massive expanse of the void, creating a bubble with a thick wall to keep the void from entering his new creation.
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The Dream Realm
The first realm he created served as the cornerstone of Reevanthara’s vision. He bade all the gods to funnel as much Life as they could into what he called the Dream Realm. This realm was an unfocused chaotic mass of energy that was nearly impossible for the gods to manipulate.
It’s malleable nature meant that it was always changing, so anything a god did to fix it in a given form quickly faded as the chaotic energy shifted with lightning speed. Most of the gods grumbled at Reevanthara when they saw how useless this realm was, but he’d already moved on to the second realm.
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The Realm of Life
Reevanthara created the Dream Realm as he did, because he knew the massive amounts of chaotic Life would be necessary to sustaining the cycle. He’d never intended to use the magic directly, since such a feat would be far easier in the second realm.
The energy from the Dream Realm was fed directly into the second realm, which Reevanthara dubbed the Realm of Life, or Argan in the elder tongue. Here Life was much easier to manipulate and the Elder gods were pleased with Reevanthara’s Great Cycle.
However, the cycle was still incomplete. It needed a mechanism to recycle the Life back into the Realm of Dreams, so Reevanthara began construction on the third realm.
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The Spirit Realm
In order for the Great Cycle to continue indefinitely it needed a mechanism to recycle the Life the gods had originally invested. The third realm was designed to gather all the energy from the Life Realm and channel it back into the Dream Realm.
The Spirit Realm was the realm of entropy, of death and reclamation. Here things slowly broke down into the base Life that had given them form originally. They were drawn inexorably towards the center of the Spirit Realm, a swirling mass of energy that served as a portal back to dream.
So it was that the three realms were born. Countless millenia have passed, but Reevanthara’s creation outlived even the mighty god himself. We, his children, still revere him for creating the cycle that sustains us all.
